A Great Computer Recycler Find?

[Wookie]

So a couple days ago I was perusing the stacks of old books and manuals at my local computer recycler looking for interesting stuff. (As a pro tip for others, when looking at old computer books/manuals, anything professionally bound is 99% likely to be junk. What you're looking for are 3-ring binders, or other hastily bound materials as these tend to be docs related to SDK's or products in development and thus contain engineering specs and programming details.) So, I found exactly what I was looking for, three printing shop bound volumes about 2" thick each.

 

It turns out, the docs are the NDA protected confidential documentation for the Atari ST and related operating software. They are dated 1986 and includes the following sections:

 

Intro to Gem Programming

MADMAC 68000 Macro Assembler Reference

DB: The Atari Debugger

Atari ST Developers Q & A printouts from Compuserve Groups

The Atari Forum Newsletter from Volume 1 Number 1 to Volume 1 Number 4

TOS 1.4 Release Notes

Atari GEMDOS Reference Manual

Pexec Cookbook

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GEMDOS BIOS

GEMDOS Programmer's Guide

DEC C Language Programming Guide for CP/M-68K (This applies to the ST because the C compiler was licensed from DEC)

S.A.L.A.D. Still Another Line A Document

Intelligent Keyboard Protocol

Engineering Hardware Specification of the Atari ST Computer System <---- Interesting stuff

MIDI Specification 1.0

Hardware Manufacturer Manuals for the support chips (async transfer chip, sound chip, etc)

GEM Programmer's Guide Volume 2: AES

 

So did I find something interesting? These documents were all protected under NDA when the original owner received them. So I'm not sure that the community has had access to these.

 

One nice thing about the printing shop binding is that I can easily pull them apart and feed the stacks of pages into the multi-page hopper on my scanner. My plan is to scan these into PDFs and then eBay the lot. If anybody is interested in the original manuals, IM me and maybe we can work out a deal. The one thing I'm most interested in is creating PDF's and making them available to the ST programming community.

 

--Wookie

[+GroovyBee]

Atariforge has these too :-

 

http://dev-docs.atariforge.org/html/search.php?find=_k

 

It'd be good to compare them if you have time.

[raskar42]

wow

nice find

[Wookie]

Atariforge has these too :-

 

http://dev-docs.atariforge.org/html/search.php?find=_k

 

It'd be good to compare them if you have time.

 

Well, I just did a cursory check of the dates and they match up. Well, I guess I don't need to take the time to create PDF's then. Cool, I'm glad I posted here before starting the conversion. I'll still be putting these up on eBay soon or selling them to a forum member.

 

--Wookie

[nathanallan]

Why not keep them? Not your kind of thing? Definitely a great find, I would have picked them up too.

[KLund1]

So a couple days ago I was perusing the stacks of old books and manuals at my local computer recycler looking for interesting stuff. (As a pro tip for others, when looking at old computer books/manuals, anything professionally bound is 99% likely to be junk. What you're looking for are 3-ring binders, or other hastily bound materials as these tend to be docs related to SDK's or products in development and thus contain engineering specs and programming details.) So, I found exactly what I was looking for, three printing shop bound volumes about 2" thick each.

 

 

Where are these stores? I went and dropped off some old electronics as a local recycler and they would not let me past the counter to see what was in back. How do you get to where the good stuff may be hiding?

[atarian63]

That is one of the thing my business does,for the public as well as large corporations. We cannot let the public in due to some contracts requiring a secure building and chain of custody.

You do see items of this type but very rare anymore. Most items from the public are just boring old run of the mill PC related items. no collectors value. TV's stereos,vcr's etc. through the years I have seen Atari Falcons and 2 or three Atari TT030's of course some commodore stuff (which I donate to a select few here) The more interesting stuff comes from large retailers however most of what we get were are required to destroy and recycle so the products do not compete with current stocks. Lots of xbox 360's and dead LCD's.

Large companies and Hospitals just have PC's. Rather dull.

[Wookie]

RePC in Seattle. They are a "recycler" in the sense that they sort the "could be sold again" from the "should go to the electronics recycler". They have a couple big warehouses of old computers and parts. They have a "vintage" section that's always got old macs, pets, c64's, apple ii's. I'm waiting to see a falcon or TT show up some day.

 

--Wookie

[Wookie]

A couple of years ago I bought a stack of sparcstation 20's for $5 each. They were all in working condition. I used them as web servers and firewalls for a few years. RePC always some cool Sun hardware.

 

--Wookie

[nathanallan]

A couple of years ago I bought a stack of sparcstation 20's for $5 each. They were all in working condition. I used them as web servers and firewalls for a few years. RePC always some cool Sun hardware.

 

--Wookie

My school was using them to teach my Linux classes a few years back, I wold have loved to have a haul like that one. Sparcboxes are neat machines, +1 for making them work at something.

[tjlazer]

I go to REPC all the time. Got some cool stuff, but it can get pricey as the owner knows about the retro stuff fetching some good coin.